McCaffrey says Dubs schedule not to blame for defeat

The Boys in Blue took their team holiday later than usual after their All Ireland winning exploits last year with many senior players not returning to action until later in the league campaign.

The Dubs lost to Kerry in the league final, ending an unbeaten run of thirty six matches, but McCaffrey says a different schedule this year isn't to blame.

"I don't think so to be honest," he said.

"We were fit and flying go into all of the games. Everyone who was taking to the pitch was one hundred percent. We set our own standards for games and didn't probably reach them in the final so it's given us a lot to think about.

"We'll take a lot of lessons from that Kerry game and from the league as a whole and hopefully it will feed into some good championship performances."

"Of course we were disappointed - we lost. We go out to play our best in every game and to get a result in every game and everyone was disappointed. We're a competitive bunch of lads, if that was a challenge match you'd be disappointed afterwards.

"You're not in it to lose games, it's never a nice feeling. It was a loss and it was tough but hopefully we'll take some lessons from it.

"You look back and analyse all your games, the good ones and the bad ones, and hopefully take learnings from them all.

"We've been back with the clubs since the league final so we haven't done that yet but I'm sure it will be something that we look at.

"I'm sure there'll be lots of things we did very well that we'll try to do more of and I'm sure there'll be a few things we did poorly that we'll try to do much less of."

McCaffrey was speaking as AIB celebrate their Third Year as Sponsor of the GAA All-Ireland Football Championship.